


Your Hand in Mine

by rioseco



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Reunions, up to KH3 Ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-02-27 02:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18729943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rioseco/pseuds/rioseco
Summary: At the end of the line, the final station waits.





	Your Hand in Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-KH3 ending, but disregards Secret Ending. I don't know how to tag properly. ;-;

This time, when Riku wakes, he knows: he’s done it. What exactly ‘it _’_ is isn’t quite clear, even to himself, but this is nothing like those countless nights he’d spent trying to force a drop into a place that doesn’t - _couldn’t_ \- exist. Nothing like those nights that only ever ended with Riku jerking alive with fierce static bleeding grey into his head and a gaping hole in his heart.

No. Instead today, Riku stirs awake from atop a bed of crushed warm sand, gently cradling the lines of his body. When he peels his eyes open, he’s met not with the spartan cream ceiling of his room at the Land of Departure and a headache set to split, but rather, with a glass-clear sky brushed pale powder blue.   

He freezes. This - this is a sky he hasn’t allowed himself to see ever since —

…

A heavy weight plummets, straight from his throat to the bottom of his heart, with a muted little _thunk_ : the dull ache of unearned nostalgia. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, briefly, tightly, and then -- he exhales.

And he readies his heart to accept whatever has brought him here.

 

There’s a distinct weightlessness to his body. He can feel it as he slowly pushes himself up from the familiar shores. Nearby, a quiet boyish groan sounds from someone stirring awake. _Ven_ , he recognizes. And it’s not just Ven. When he takes a moment to finally take in his immediate surroundings, Riku’s surprised to find their tiny play island filled with dozens and dozens of people and all manner of creatures standing like carved life-size sculptures, each flickering in and out of the gentle sunlight as if they were mere apparitions. They range from glassy clear, just a mere outline in one moment, before marbling into color in the next. 

“… Riku?” mumbles Ventus, the fog of slumber slowly lifting from his voice. “Hey, isn’t this…"

“…The Destiny Islands,” Riku finishes for him quietly, even though he knows that’s not quite right. The waters were never this eerily still on Destiny Islands - never eerily still enough to reflect the sky like an unending mirror stretching farther than his eyes can even fathom before vanishing into an invisible horizon. The warm thick air smells so sweetly of _home_ , but no frothy waves lap endlessly against the shores. No seagulls flock or cry from overhead, no wind dances atop the treetops, sweeping the lush green foliage into soft quiet rustles. It smells of home, but there’s a lifelessness to the world - as if the islands themselves have been suspended in time and space. 

Even if this place feels _close enough_ to home, there’s just enough left wanting that the inconsistency runs his blood cold.    

 

As if instinctually searching for something - some _one_ \- to soothe the discomfort, Riku’s eyes drift to Their Spot. A flash, searing bright like starlight and fire, and he sees her: _Kairi -_ seated alone on the paopu tree, her profile turned to gaze out at the hazy horizon and her voice a low indistinguishable murmur. Riku scrambles to his feet, quicker for the uncanniness of it all, to leap over, bracing her slight shoulder with a steady hand -- or at least, he _would_ have, if his hand hadn’t phased right through her.

“Kairi?” He whispers, but Kairi does not turn to look at him. In fact, it’s as if she cannot register him at all. 

The only thing she does is clench her tiny fists tightly, white-knuckled, in her lap and whisper, her voice as thin as a quivering reed, “ _I’m so sorry, Sora_. _It’s all my fault_.” 

Kairi repeats the words like a prayer or a mantra, voice crackling with something so utterly primal and vulnerable that Riku _knows_ he’s not supposed to be listening in. And only at the tail end of her muttering does he catch her utter the softest “ _I love you_ ,” he’s ever heard. 

His hand falters, fingers hovering in the air uselessly.  

A firm hand drops onto his shoulder, grounding him in the moment and Ventus gently tugs Riku from Kairi’s image, face stolidly neutral. With a small shake of his head, he warns Riku, “She’s not real,” and again tugs Riku mercifully away from her tiny crying face. It’s an unspoken kindness, because there is nothing Riku handles more poorly than situations he cannot at least attempt to fix.

“Yeah,” Riku mutters slowly, trying and failing one last time to rest his hand against Kairi’s shaking shoulder. With a grimace, he watches as his hand merely slips through the weeping mirage. “Hey,” he turns to look at Ventus, brows knitted. “Do you know what’s going on or something? How are you -- _here_?” 

“No clue,” Ventus mutters, turning to peer back at Riku with an equally perplexed look. “Eerr, to be honest with you, I’m as lost as you. It… sounded like you were having nightmares or something so I came to your room to check in on you.” He frowns. “I tried to wake you up; I thought it might be a dream… related to _him_ , maybe? But then -  when I touched you, I just woke up here…”

Riku swallows down dry spit and reluctantly, he nods in understanding.

Ventus hadn’t been wrong to check in on him. More times than he could’ve counted, he’d tried to will himself to dive into some stray fragments of dreams he hoped Sora might be dreaming, only to wake up each night in nauseating pain and screaming static nearly frying his mind and nerves from the inside out. Waking to a hoarse, abused throat and searing throbs against his eyelids the first dozen times should have been warning enough that Riku needed to _stop_ attempting the impossible, but — but in the end, his inability to give up finally got him somewhere. Right? This - whatever this mirage replica of Destiny Islands was - this could only be a sign.

Still… All that time wasted, until _now_? A strange knot in his gut flops at that, but he ignores the feeling as he grimaces just a touch. 

“Yeah, sorry about that, Ven. I’ve… just been trying out some stuff.” He keeps the words vague and his tone light, not particularly interested in treading on the specifics when Ventus might very well spill the beans to Aqua  - which, invariably would mean Riku would be immediately reprimanded by Master Yen Sid for unacceptably reckless behavior. 

Ven looks at him. His eyes are as deep and piercing as Sora’s as they scrutinize Riku. “Stuff like dream-hopping, you mean?”

“Just -” he says, casually slipping away and side-stepping the mirage of a woman with dark silky hair knotted high upon her head. “- you know, stuff.” Riku mutters again. Ven huffs, and the jut in his lip suggests he has a few choice thoughts on what _stuff_ means, but thankfully, he doesn’t push. Instead, Ven just looks at Riku cautiously before finally tearing his gaze away and surveying the scene unfolding before them.

It’s _bizarre_ seeing the play island so densely inhabited - if inhabited is even the right word. Riku’s eyes catch on Merlin’s silhouette which is but a mere translucent shimmer around the edges, looking more like a refraction borne of island heat, wavering in by the lip of the tiny islet. 

There are so many people - entities, even - that Riku’s never seen before, though equally, there are just as many people he can very easily identify. The distinctive bold figures of Donald and Goofy cut a curious figure by the coconut trees. 

“Careful,” Ven warns Riku as Riku’s footfalls come a little too close to stepping on a tiny pastel piglet, nearly stepping clean through the creature’s immaterial form. The caution, Riku thinks, is unnecessary considering his limbs would simply slip right past the nervous creature, but still, the two deftly maneuver around as many corporeal images as they can. Sometimes a figure shimmers into existence before they can avoid phasing into the strange phantasms, but for the most part, they do well enough considering how crowded the island is.

They weave between the transparent, flickering figures of other tiny woodland creatures, huddled together by the wooden shed. The pale outline of Terra stands, shoulders back, rippling into existence and rippling back out, where Riku remembers, he’d bequeathed the Keyblade onto Riku for the first time. The outline of Aqua kneels against the soft sand, her hand clutching at her glass-cut blue wayfinder and eyes searching into stagnant air. Ventus curiously peers at her, watching the way her figure seems cloudy, filled with soft pale pastels and not quite _right_ the way Kairi had been -  yet so much more real than the other phantasms haunting the island. 

“Yeesh,” Ventus mumbles. “This is kinda eerie, huh?” 

“No kidding,” Riku responds softly, not entirely surprised to see Ventus’s own figure shimmer into focus next to Aqua’s pastel image. “Huh. Guess you’ve got another twin to deal with besides Roxas.”

Ven splutters out a dismayed ‘ _hey_ ’, elbowing Riku. Still, he frowns at the doppelgänger sharing his face, his eyes. The image of Ventus flickers and shimmers, and Ven quietly gnaws on his lip as the image shifts deeper into the scenery.

“Hey Riku,” he hesitates, eyes fixed on the mirage of his own likeness now solidifying into deep, vivid colors blooming as strong as Kairi. “... Any chance you know how to get out of here? I _really_ don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

Ventus is right, probably. Ventus instinctually knows more than most about the most enigmatic realms closest to death and his about-face _should_ be a warning sign for Riku and yet — yet, the Destiny Islands has never felt so _welcoming_ since he’d returned from the Keyblade War. Even though this isn’t his actual home and he can tell by the dozens of random flickering ghosts of blank-faced strangers, there’s a fragrant nostalgic scent to the air here. Salt on a nonexistent breeze. Something sharp, clean. Uncomplicated. It reminds him of ... 

It reminds him of _Sora_. It reminds him of those long gone days when they were tiny and young, when Sora’s dad would row them over to the play island and watch over the two boys with gentle crinkled eyes. Back then, none of the other kids had ever been brave or adventurous enough to join Riku on the deserted island that, in their youth, had felt like a huge and vast new world. None of them except, of course, Sora. It reminds him of chasing sunsets, sprinting across what are just small sand dunes now but back then, had felt as large as huge rolling hills. Smudged cheeks, skinned knees, sparkling pinprick stars under balmy night skies. It reminds him of Sora. How races and chases, wrestling and scrambling, wind carrying their laughter on every passing breeze, how all of that had been so easy back then. …If Riku could just relive those memories without the undercurrent of _longing_ , it might be easier for him to let this go. But it’s hard. Every single memory of home he has now is haunted by the spectre of loss.

A spectre, it seems, that he suddenly glimpses here - in the warm golden light of this island and the scent on the air - but more than that, a spectre he _sees_ in what he imagines is just a hallucination borne of prolonged yearning. 

It appears as a flicker, right along the shores and unfurls into a vision.

“Actually, Ven,” Riku says slowly, eyes widening as he sees the mirage unfold before him. “I’m pretty sure I’m exactly where I need to be,” 

His voice falters only just the barest bit at the tail end of his words because — from the corner of his eye, he finds what he’d been searching for all along: a harsh flash of silver, sharp like a knife’s edge. A broad back swathed in black. But more importantly, next to the figure: a spectre full of _motion_ \- life, in this silent place that has otherwise been petrified in time.  Flashes of black and red. Hair a disaster as always. 

A beacon of life.

_Sora_. 

His limbs move before his brain can catch up to him. Without another word, Riku sprints across the glittering gold sand and -  as if he can sense Riku, the image of Sora suddenly whips around to stare back at him - the _real_ Riku in abject disbelief. Sora clambers to his feet, palms dusty with soft pearly sand, and he stands at full height, bright frenzied eyes widening impossibly at Riku. Riku, who’s scanning every inch of Sora like he’s never beheld a person so wondrous before in his entire life.

“Riku?” Sora whispers hoarsely, blue blue eyes shining in rapt astonishment. Sora leans in close, so close Riku can practically feel his warm breath against him as the spectre he’d been searching for for months stands right before him.

“ _Riku_?” He tries again, voice climbing a pitch higher. His brows knit painfully and he swallows thickly around the name, as if the very sound hurts him.

“ _Sora_ ,” Riku breathes out, face crumbling into the first real smile he’s smiled in months. “ _Sora_. Hey, I finally found you.”

 

* * *

 

According to Sora, the phantom Destiny Islands that Riku and Ventus have found themselves on has been unofficially dubbed Sora’s Station of Death. When Sora asks a little hesitantly how long it’s been since Kairi returned to the living, he off-handedly mumbles that, “Eeerr, well, I guess time just doesn’t really exist here? Or it flows weirdly. I don’t know - it feels like it’s been years.”

Ventus offers him a gentle, if bittersweet smile. If anything, the blonde knows exactly how disorienting the realms between death and sleep can feel when trying to map it onto the flow of time in the land of the living. It’s easier to exist in the strange stasis of ignorance until something - _someone_ \- appears and reveals the unsettling truth of your state of being. Or, in Sora’s case, state of unbeing.

“It’s been about three months. Sorry we took so long to find you…”

Sora gnaws on his bottom lip absently as if trying to reconcile the disconnect, before a tiny little smile unfurls on his lips. “Aw, that’s okay!” He reassures Ven bracingly. “I mean - I’m y’know. _Dead_. Real dead. I didn’t think _anyone_ would find me.”

“Yeah?” Ven shoots a wry little smile at Riku. “Hey, looks like your best friend has no faith in you, Riku.”

“Ack - I meant _could_ , not _would!”_

Riku just chuckles, all the stress of having to locate Sora finally deflating inside him. It doesn’t really matter, the semantics of it all; he’d _found_ Sora, and that definitely had to be the hardest part of it. Knowing there even _was_ a Sora to actually save and bring home had been half the battle - be it with Master Yen Sid or Mickey or Master Aqua, each of them had only shiftily glanced askance in discomfort whenever Riku demanded some sort of answer or requested a retinue to somehow _search for_ Sora - as if they’d all but given up and were just idly waiting down the clock until Riku eventually would too.

“I dunno,” Ven shrugs innocently, “I don’t think whether he _could_ or _couldn’t_ would’ve stopped Riku from finding you.”

“Well, that’s not surprising,” Sora grins cheekily, “Riku _has_ always been the stubborn one.” 

“Rich coming from you, Sora,” Riku snorts back, though there’s little venom and a lot more affection in the words. “Anyways, I don’t know how much time we have here… I mean, Ven and I have no idea how we even ended up here or what this place even is.”

“Maybe Master Yen Sid can help?” Ven offers hesitantly. “Or maybe something in the libraries?”

“Right.” Riku nods before looking at Sora apologetically. “Sora, I’m sorry butwe’re going to do whatever we can to bring you back. Alright? So just — hold on a little longer. I’m not going to leave you here any longer than I have to.”

“Right! I know you’ll find me again, Riku,” he says with a warm fond grin that Riku finds himself mirroring unbidden. “And you know… It’s not that bad here, honestly.” He shrugs, glancing around at the flickering people surrounding them. “It’s actually pretty cool - check this out,” he says, peeking around at the flickering figures around him. 

His face brightens as he catches sight of a young brunette woman with choppy brown locks gazing pensively into the middle distance. Her outline has filled out and for the moment, it’s almost as if she’s become fully corporeal as her breezy rosy dress floods with color. Sora touches her wrist gently and like a little flash, Riku thinks he’s hallucinating because an image of a blonde woman splashing water at Sora playfully expands before his very eyes before the sparkling droplets of lake water slowly flicker away into an image of Sora beaming at the woman with lovely bluebirds twittering above his head like a sky blue halo. “I don’t know why, but sometimes, _that_ happens!” Sora exclaims with a bright grin at the image, “It’s only sometimes though, when people look like, y’know,” he waves his hand vaguely “ _real_? I think that’s when people are remembering me, and that’s when I can relive our memories together!” 

He grins. “So maybe as long as people remember me, they’ll stick around and I won’t ever have to be lonely.”

The brunette woman says slowly, voice as sweet and light as the bluebirds, “ _Sora, where did you go?”_ as Sora releases her wrist. 

“Can you -- talk with them?”

Sora hums quietly.

“Errr, not really. No one can respond or anything. I figure, maybe it’s just what their hearts are saying?” He shrugs, throwing his hands behind his head and strolling over to Riku and Ventus again. “Kind of a bummer that almost everyone’s so _sad_ all the time though…”

He shoots morose looks over at Donald and Goofy. “I wanna relive all my fun memories with Donald! And Goofy! You and Kairi too!”

The words “ _because that’s all I have here”_ are left unsaid. But Riku hears it.

“But you’re all always so sad here, saying these things that just…” he trails off, voice dropping into a tiny murmur. “I don’t want you guys to be sad when you think of me, even if we’re realms apart, you know? Cause I’m still with you guys, even if it’s just in your memories." 

The smile Sora gives both Riku and Ventus is a little wilted around the edges, faltering as if he’s beseeching them to understand. The kind of smile that winds him through, a solid sucker punch to the gut, and it brings him back to the helpless smiles he’d been on the receiving end of back when he was still being spun round and round in a web of his own anger.

“Hey,” Riku says softly, “C’mon, Sora - you’re coming back with us, I promised, right?”

“Yeah,” Sora nods a little hesitantly. “Yeah. I know. But maybe you guys can tell everyone back home to remember me happily? You know, so while I’m waiting, I can see everyone smiling here?”

The words “ _because that’s all I have here”_ are left unsaid. But Riku hears it. And he nods, resolute. “Of course,” he declares. “Of course,” he says a little more softly, already dreading the moment he will eventually be forced from this place and forced into a world where Sora doesn’t exist any longer, desperately trying to cling to happy memories of Sora instead of the strange hollow ache inside of him. 

 

* * *

 

Eventually, when Riku wakes - for real this time - he’s met not with the spartan cream ceiling of the Land of Departure nor the glass-clear sky of Sora’s Station of Death, but rather with Ventus’s face, far too close for comfort. His eyes are huge and deep blue, strained tight around the corners. His brows furrow under disheveled sandy blonde hair and Ventus’s fingertips press blotchy bruises into his shoulders, his grip is so tight. He whispers fiercely, indescribably loud into the silence of the austere bedroom, “Riku - _Riku_ , you have to wake up.”

And for the first time in forever, Riku doesn’t _want_ to.

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from a great post-rock song!
> 
> Please note that while I've got a decent amount written for this, I'm struggling with getting into important particular mid-sections. I'm going to keep trying to pick away at those sections to make it something I like, but... I won't make promises. ;-; 
> 
> Maybe I'll add ficlets of bits and bobs even if I abandon the full-chapter idea, because I do enjoy some of the ideas I had for this... But I do ensure a second chapter at least :D


End file.
